The three snorkels broke the surface of the ocean, tiny specks far off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, and at a steady clip skimmed towards the United States.
Six feet beneath the waves throbbed a vessel like no other, a 15m-long wood and fibreglass submarine carrying a fortune in cocaine and a crew with a mission improbable.
Taking turns to breathe through the PVC pipes jutting over the waves, the four smugglers were risking a vast expanse of sea, US and central American coastguard patrols, and the possibility their home-made U-boat would disintegrate.
If they made it the prize was enormous: the cargo of 2,7 tonnes of cocaine had a street value of up to $89-million.
But last weekend the odyssey ended in international waters about 160km off Costa Rica’s Cabo Blanco national park, a surfing and wildlife paradise on the Nicoya peninsula, when the authorities spotted the snorkels and swooped.
”This is the first time in the country’s history that a craft with these characteristics has been caught near the national coasts,” said Fernando Berrocal, Costa Rica’s security minister.
Painted white, the vessel had an engine capable of up to 12kph and was shaped like a conventional submarine but may not have inspired the confidence of a navy sailor or an oceanographer like Jacques Cousteau. In essence a big tube held together with a DIY kit, it had a baler to keep out water.
”It’s incredible how drug traffickers are using different means to be able to take drugs to the United States,” Berrocal told local reporters. He said the vessel was probably built in a small town near the Colombian port of Buenaventura and may have intended to dock at Guatemala or Mexico to transfer the cargo to trucks.
Costa Rican coastguards were aided in the operation by the US coastguard, US Drug Enforcement Administration agents, the FBI, and Colombian officials. The crew, two Colombians, a Guatemalan and a Sri Lankan man, were arrested and taken to the US to face drug trafficking charges as they were captured in international waters, said Berrocal.
Submarines appear to be becoming a favoured method of drug smuggling. In August a 10,5-metre empty submarine was found in an inlet off Spain’s north-west Atlantic coast, prompting suspicion that a large shipment had been successfully imported. In March a much bigger 30m long half-finished vessel was discovered in a warehouse in a suburb of Bogota, the capital of Colombia. Russian documents found at the site suggested Russian mafia involvement and a European destination for the submarine, which probably would have been dismantled and taken by lorry to Colombia’s Pacific or Caribbean coast.
Colombia produces about 90% of the world’s cocaine. Most is smuggled on speedboats that some times meet up on the high seas with cargo ships that take the drugs to port.
The Colombian navy on Monday reported it had seized a speedboat in the Caribbean believed to be carrying 1,3 tonnes of cocaine. The crew tossed part of the drugs into the sea when the navy approached. – Guardian Unlimited Â